


Dental Work

by knightinsourarmor



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Light Angst, Self-Multilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 21:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14120883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinsourarmor/pseuds/knightinsourarmor
Summary: Fjord thinks about how he didn't want to be a monster either.





	Dental Work

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr because I had some feels, so I thought to share it here too.

_’ I did my own dental work.’_

He remembers the feeling of their absence. How he’d run his tongue over the bottom row of teeth, again and again, each time he came to the gap how his heart would skip for just a moment. The strangeness that the absence of his tusks gave him, a feeling that is difficult to describe. How do you describe the absence of a part of your body? You are whole one moment and then incomplete the next and it was hard for Fjord to fully accept that it was for the best.

He can still taste the copper that had filled his mouth sometimes, late at night when he is near sleep. How the blood had covered his tongue, covered his mouth, covered his hands. Redness that stained his clothes and the ground underneath him, but he had no time to do it properly. To ensure that he would not make a mess of things. It was already hard enough to pull them from his mouth, he didn’t have time to think of pointless things like bloodstained shirts. He could replace them later. 

There was a soreness that didn’t go away, that became something psychological after the real pain had faded. A punishment, he thought to himself, just himself, for betraying himself. He shouldn’t have been such a coward, coerced by fear and disgust, damning himself to something irreversible. 

Irreversible. 

Fjord wondered if they would just grow back, but teeth do not grow back like skin or hair or fingernails. They are like an arm or a leg, a limb on his body that once it is gone, can never return. He will never look the same, be the same, as he once was, but it’s for the best. 

He sees the fear in Nott’s eyes, sees the desperation as she shouts, “He can change me!” because he knows the feeling all too well. The taste of blood comes back to him, the way his heart had raced, the tears that had fell despite his best efforts not to cry over something so pitiful. She does not want to be a monster and he wishes he trusted her enough to tell her that he understands. 

Perhaps he will one day. One day he’ll tell her how he wanted to be changed too. The mix feeling of relief and pain, how much he hated himself afterwards even as a weight was lifted from his body. He’ll tell her how he hopes she won’t regret her choice, that it will stay with her the rest of her life. How she’ll have to hold the memory of becoming someone else. She might not be pulling tusks from her mouth, but it’s her choice to make to have magic cast upon her to be something else, to be someone else. 

He goes to bed that night with copper in his mouth and wakes with a soreness he had not felt in a long time. 

He hopes it will make her happy.


End file.
